THE OLD SPANISH TRAIL
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can be done to hasten its completion will be a service of national importance”. The War Department, in the person of Mr. J. M. Wainwright, Acting Secretary, declared that “considered as a whole, the proposed transcontinental highway from Jacksonville to San Diego, with its connections to border points, is an essential element in the plans being formulated by the War Department for national defense and should be completed without delay according to the best standards for road construction”. Mr. Ayres stayed in the east seven months, which in retrospect seems the most critical period of the Trail’s development. It was at this time that Federal Aid was restricted to seven per cent of total highway mileage by States, and inter-State routes were being selected upon which to base this national system. Through his efforts, every mile of the Old Spanish Trail was finally included in the Federal Aid mileage.
It is ample testimony to the value and thoroughness of Mr. Ayres’s work as Managing Director of the Old Spanish Trail, to state that in 1921 there was no continuous, direct road across South Texas, while in 1930, the organization he served delivered to the traveling public an open road across the entire continent. By States, Florida has 439 miles of Trail, Alabama 77, Mississippi 93, Louisiana 341, Texas 949, New Mexico 195, Arizona 507, and California 173.
Texas enjoys one-third of the entire mileage, of what is really more than a highway. It is a trunk-line, receiving and distributing a vast majority of the people who are coming to the Southwest in search of opportunities. The phenomenal development and adoption of the automobile has placed it preeminently first in transportation. Where the automobile can reach, the railroad will follow. It serves not only for transportation of passengers, but is being employed for freighting in the Southwest to a great extent because of infrequent train service or circuitous routing. Community growth is coming more and more to depend upon highways as once they depended upon railroads. The travel movement of today tends southward, and with it come hundreds of thousands of dollars for recreation and investment as is already evidenced by the establishment of vacation resorts, syndicate farm developments, hotels, and industries and by greatly increased population. Al-